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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

How do you describe sugar snap peas?Sublime?There’s really nothing to compare them to.The peas have arrived, wow have they arrived.And this is looking like a great year for
them after two bad ones.The month of
May was sunny with seasonal temperatures, except for Memorial Day weekend when
we had three days with highs in the 90’s.Last night there was a much needed rain and the forecast for the next
week is for high’s in the 70’s.I think
the peas made it through the heat, but another hot day might have finished them. There’s eight feet of trellis and the peas
are thick and growing fast.

I like to pick sugar snaps after the peas have filled out
inside but before the pod gets woody, that’s when the peas develop their
sugars.There’s a bit of vein but that
can be removed when the ends are pulled off.And are they ever delicious, raw or cooked.There’s no vegetable that I like better,
none.Sweet, green and crisp all
together.Looks like I’ll be giving some
away.

Monday, May 28, 2012

Growing one’s food is part of not only becoming more
self-sufficient but also less dependent on a top-down business model to supply
ones needs.I believe that the greatest
problem in our society is the obscene excess of corporate power.The “people” who really control things in our
society have last names of Inc. and most of our elected “representatives” of
either party are simply owned outright by the Inc’s.The best way to mitigate the power of
corporations is to reduce one’s dependence on them.One reason I grow food.

Apologies in advance for the different fonts but Blogger is changing things on a whim.

It’s been a productive week:Spinach 10 oz, lettuce 12 oz, kohlrabi 9 oz, and tatsoi 18 oz.I’ve never grown Tatsoi before.In the soil it looks a lot like spinach, but
once picked I see it resembles Bok Choi more, not surprising as they are
closely related.I tried
stir-frying some and it’s very good, mild and flavorful.It should be good in soup – time to hunt some
preps on the internet.I pulled up the
kohlrabi on Sat morning since the high was predicted in the 90’s.It could have gotten bigger in a few days but
the heat wave may ruin it.Better to pick
it now.

The
past two years the month of May was cloudy and cool, then after Memorial Day a
switch was flipped and the highs went into the 90’s in June.Not so this year.May has been very sunny and dry, but mostly
seasonal in temperature.Regular
watering has been a necessity and the plants have grown quickly.Most are about three weeks ahead of last
year.This weekend we are getting a heat
wave, high’s in the 90’s, then temps return to seasonal averages.It’s going to be tough on some plants.Here’s a pic of all the beds.

The
greens bed has produced nearly all the green vegetables so far this season.There’s a cage over the bed because I don’t
want to share with the rabbits.The
spinach is out now.Too much sunscald
and insect damage.I salvaged what I
could a few days ago and threw the rest in the compost bin.I planted a row of carrot at one end and
mulched with shredded paper.There’s some
brassicas and lettuce left.If the
lettuce makes it through this heat wave without bolting it should produce for a
few more weeks.The open spot will get a
patch of beans.

The
brassica bed is just starting to produce some food.They don’t handle this kind of heat very
well, especially since the days are cloudless, and by midday are wilted badly -
that’s when they get a shot of water.There’s two brussell’s sprouts in front.The rest is a mix of broccoli, kohlrabi, bok choi, cauliflower and
cabbage.There’s also Super Sugar Snaps
on the trellis and two cucumbers – a Diva and a Picolino – looking for space on
the trellis.

The snap peas are very vigorous this year.I just hope they get through this heat wave
and keep producing.Some will be ready to
pick today or tomorrow.I think they
are best when the peas fill out a little, since the peas have the most
sugar.

The
solanacae bed is way ahead of last year.All the plants except the eggplant went into the bed on May 1.There’s one Rosa Bianca eggplant in front
that is growing well, in spite of some pressure from flea beetles.In the tomato cages there’s a Black Krim on
the left and Supersonic (F1) on the right.I expect about 40 pounds from the Supersonic.The Black Krim, an heirloom, is a new variety
for me and I don’t know what to expect, but the vendor that I bought it from says
the flavor is excellent.The cages are
suspended on fence posts so the bottom is two feet off the ground.I’m trying to get them as tall as possible,
again for better yields.Both plants are
already up to the cage bottom.I’ll set
bamboo stakes crossways to help support the stems, and will remove some of the
suckers this week.

This is what last year's solanacae bed looked like on Memorial Day (the plants on the right side are brocolli:

The
peppers are also doing well.I got lucky
in that the tallest peppers are on the north side of the bed.All the varieties are new this year. There should be the makings of salsa in there.

The onions are looking good.They are flanked by carrots at both ends.The tall plant is cilantro.I’m not sure what I’ll do with it but will
scatter some of the seeds around for sure.I’ll need some fresh leaves when it’s time to make hot sauce. Other herbs are parsley, garlic chive, greek
oregano, sage and thyme.

That’s a Cocozelle summer squash in front and
a Honeybear acorn in the middle. The Cocozelle is supposed to be suitable for container planting which I hope means it won't take over the entire bed and part of the yard.The
butternut at the back is from direct seeding and is a few weeks behind the other squash. They have a way of catching up very quickly so I’m not too worried.It’s the one squash that never gets the
borer. It’s more of a viner and will
climb the trellis.

The
potatoes went into the trapezoidal bed this year.The bed has an odd shape since it follows the
ground contours.The two leftmost cages
contain Red Pontiacs, which do really well here.The right front cage contains a blue potato,
not sure of the varietal name, it’s a new variety for me.The right back cage has Yukon Golds, which
should be the earliest of the group.Provider beans planted May 1 are growing between the two front
cages.

A
little aside here.I mainly plant bush
beans as a filler.I set aside one or
two patches for the first plantings.The
remaining patches go wherever space opens up as things come out.I know that spaces will open up when cole
crops come out, and also in the greens bed.Other spaces will open up when potatoes and onions come out.

This bed has six rows of parsnip, a row of scallions, and
two Red Burgundy okra at the far end.The okra were set in on May 10 and have been slow getting started.Maybe this hot weather will get them
motivated to grow.The open space in
front was recently seeded with Roma beans, which are just starting to come up.

That’s the overview.Most everything is in at this point.I try to maximize yields from a limited space with a lot of vertical
structure.From this point on the
biggest challenge is dealing with things that also want to eat the plants.

Friday, May 25, 2012

This
morning like any other morning I got up and made a pot of coffee.Mug in hand I stepped out on the front porch
for some fresh air. I was looking at the
plants in the flower beds around the porch when I saw it. The perennial that I set in about a week ago,
a Foxglove, looked like it needed life support.The plant had been dug completely out of the soil, it’s roots stripped
of any soil and many of the roots separated from the plant.And I knew what was responsible for this
wanton act of vandalism.It’s got
squirrel written all over it.

Let me say right here that the porch beds are my pride and
joy so I took this kind of hard.I built them last year starting with the edging, then dug in a yard of compost into the hard clay soil.I’m not a landscaper, and can’t plan out a
bed since I don’t know the plants well enough. I bought one or two shade tolerant plants at a
time and put them in the bed, trying to get a diversity of foliage types.A few did not make it, but most did.Slowly the pieces came together.The Foxglove was the last plant to go in, and
it looked like it fit in nicely.

This could be the work of a rabbit but not likely.Squirrels like to dig, and they have a sordid
history of digging holes in the gardens.Why would it do this?It’s
tempting to believe that the animal does this out of pure malice, and I’m still
not so sure it doesn’t, but there’s got to be a reason.Some annual begonias that I planted about a
month ago were also dug up a few days after they were put in.What all these plants have in common is they
were rooted in a sort of wood chip potting mixture.There must be something in this that attracts
the squirrels and drives them to dig through the roots.At any rate I’ll be amazed if this plant
makes it through this trauma.

The moles have been a real nuisance in the beds this
year.Last year they were not much of a
problem, but this year they are on a rampage.And I know what they are going after – earthworms.They’ll eat every earthworm in the beds.I move the trap every day, but so far no
luck.One mole has been running roughshod through the
brassica bed, laying down a network of trails.The larger plants can handle the disturbance, but when one of these
rodents tunnels near the roots of a smaller plant the void can leave the roots
unable to take up water.So far I’ve
been able to press down the tunnels every day and keep the smaller plants from
dying, although some have wilted badly.

The sugar snap peas have done very well this year in the
abundant sunshine.They are at the top
of the trellis and full of young peas.Problem is the next two or three days are supposed to have highs in the
mid 90’s.And peas just don’t like
temperatures above 90 degrees.I’m
hoping the pods that are already set will fill out.If the heat wave lasts only a few days the
plants may stop setting flowers then resume when temperatures go down.I’ll make sure they have plenty of water this
weekend.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Tuesday was time to mow the banks of the pond, which I do
once, maybe twice, a year.Most of the
pond shore gets benign neglect and is a wildlife habitat. The shore area
bordering the lawn is cut with the trail cutter.Cutting favors the grasses and sets back the
broadleaf weeds and trees. I'll put the picnic table underneath the hop hornbeam tree on the right - a place to clean fish in the shade.

I put chains on the drive wheels of the garden tractor and
removed the mower deck, then hooked up the brush cutter, essentially a big
mower that’s towed. The mower is backed down the bank as far as I feel comfortable, then pulled up to level ground. I got most of it,
but will have to finish some areas with a string trimmer.The original owners hand mowed all the way
around the pond.Can’t imagine.

I’m not sure what to do with the squash.There’s three squash in one bed – a Metro
Butternut, a Honeybear Acorn, and a Cocozelle summer squash, which is supposed
to be a more modest sized plant.When I
set out the seedlings on May 3 I planted two seeds near each seedling as a
backup.Then there were two cool nights
with temps in the low 40’s.The cool
nights set back the butternut seedling while the others did OK.So now the butternut is still small with
a lot of small leaves, and the plant that came up from seed is almost as large.I’ll probably remove the older butternut
and leave the one that came up from seed.I’ve found that plants that get off to a bad start and don’t look “right”
early on often don’t do well later.

The other two squash plants each have a second smaller
backup plant a few inches away.I’m
wondering if I should just leave both of them grow.I don’t know if two closely grown squash will
produce the same as a single squash. Maybe each squash plant likes its space.

I’ve got one cucumber plant off to a decent start.It’s a newer variety from Pinetree called
Picolino. I also started some Diva’s
indoors and out of three seeds none germinated. Just my luck, I tested the seeds for viability
last winter and both seeds tested came up (the seeds are three years old).I planted four more seeds and one came up. That plant was just set out but
there’s a lot of competing plants around it.

I’m hoping the Picolino cuke will get up onto the trellis before the Pakman
broccoli gets any larger. The broccoli may have to lose a leaf or two.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Not
bragging. Well maybe I am a little, but the first brocolli is always very
cool.Last year I noticed that this
broccoli variety, Major, stays low, usually not much over a foot high.I
realized that I could include it with the first set of brassicas that are
transplanted into the greens bed while the plastic greenhouse is still on the
bed.It turned out that the strategy was
moot since we had a very warm spring and the greenhouse came off soon after the plants were set out.Bottom line the broccoli got into the bed
about two weeks earlier than in the past, and today it’s ready about two weeks earlier.

And
it’s a beauty, isn’t it?I’ll harvest it
at the end of the day.I’m guessing it’s
at least 12 oz.One thing I recently
noticed about this variety is the leaves become blue as the plant makes a head.Maybe a lot of varieties do this and I never
noticed.It may have something to do
with the alkaline soil here. After cutting this head I'll leave the plant and hopefully get some side shoots from it.

A
lot of things can be repurposed for the garden.I’ve been building foundation beds around the house and bought a tray of
Ajuga plugs to plant in the beds.Ajuga is a very tough groundcover that works great along walkways and
does well in part shade.The tray it
came in has 32 pockets and a 3.5 inch pot for each pocket.I like the deep pots for starting brassicas,
eggplant, okra – anything that develops a deeper root system.This setup will keep the pots from tipping
over.Perfect.I wonder how much of this stuff gets tossed
out routinely by landscaping companies.

Here in the midwest this is a critical time of year, when
plants are getting established.All the
summer crops – tomato, pepper, eggplant, squash, okra – are planted now.The plants will grow a lot just in the next
two weeks.By Memorial Day most of the
beds should be covered in green.Many of the plants
are one or two weeks ahead of schedule because of the warm weather.

This is the greens bed, the bed that has produced most of
the green vegetables so far.There’s
still plenty of lettuce and spinach in there.How much I get will depend on the weather.So far it’s been seasonal, except for several
days in the 80’s in early May.The large
plant with blue leaves is a Major Broccoli.The head is just about ready to pick.I’ll leave this plant in the bed after the head is cut and see how many side shoots it will
produce.

The solanacae bed.There are two tomato plants, Supersonic and Black Krim, that are almost
to the bottom of the cages.There’s a
Rosa Bianca eggplant and six pepper plants: Holy Mole, Carmen, Poblano, Hot
Poppa, Franks, and an Italian frying variety whose name escapes me.

The brassica bed.That’s a tatsoi with the spinach-like leaves and a sage in the
front.There was a gap in seedling
production because of my travels so there are a lot of small plants in the bed
right now, although some of the broccoli’s are sizing up. At the far end there's two brussell's sprouts. There’s sugar snap peas on the trellis and a
new variety of cucumber that I’m trying called Picolino.

The onion bed with a row of carrots and some herbs in the
triangle.Lesson learned: onion seeds
keep only one year.It’s a mix of mostly
copra from seed and red onion from sets.

The squash bed.That’s the last row of radish in the front. The radish are usually out by the time the squash go in.The squash were set out really early this
year, the first of May.The
butternut is struggling, with some burnt leaves.There were two nights with lows in the 40’s,
maybe that did it.The Honeybear Acorn
and Cocozelle summer squash are doing OK.I set in two seeds around each transplant for backup.

The parsnip bed is in front.It’s about ready for thinning.There’s two Red Burgandy okra at the left end and space for some bush
beans at the other end.The bed in back
has four cages with potatoes that are all up now.There’s two cages of Red Pontiac, one cage of
Yukon Gold, and one cage of blue potatoes that I’m trying for the first
time.There’s two rows of Provider beans
between the front cages that are up now.

Time to keep my fingers crossed.There’s little bug pressure this time of year
except for cutworms, and sprays of Bt around new seedlings appear to be keeping
them under control.Probably the biggest
concern are late spring storms, but we haven’t had any yet that are
damaging.Cheers.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

To my mother.Born
1918.Fort Wayne North Side High School
Class of 1936.Her mother came to this
country in search of a better life. Mom's mom was 18 when she and her husband left the Rheinpfalz area of Germany shortly
before World War I and bought a small farm in what is now the outskirts of Fort
Wayne.They raised produce and sold it
at the downtown farmer’s market.He was
killed in a farm accident, when hornets attacked the plow horses and he was caught in the plow.

My grandmother was left to raise two girls in a new
country.She remarried and had my mother.The marriage was rocky and short-lived.My grandmother and her daughters moved into a
tiny house near downtown Fort Wayne.Grandma Rosie, as we called her, became the head cook at a restaurant in
Wolf & Dessauer, the largest department store downtown.

It’s hard to imagine what life must have been like for
people at that time.When my mom was a
little girl my grandfather took her back to Germany with him.My grandmother had to take the boat to Germany
and sue to get her daughter back.Mom
never wanted to talk about her childhood much, except how much she wanted to
get out of that house.She met my dad,
they married and they had three kids. My
dad started a car repair shop.He ran
with a rough crowd – car people – and knew how to raise hell. Mom and my father developed a real talent for
making each other miserable.

Her favorite song was Clair de Lune.She was the fastest typist and stenographer
in her class in high school.She worked
as a secretary at Tokheim Pump for several years.She grew Marglobe tomatoes and canned dill
pickles.We all went to St. Paul’s
Lutheran Church on Sunday.

They say the enemy of the good is holding out for the
perfect, and that’s a trap that my mother fell into.Eventually the gap between the ideal and the
reality became a place where she lived.I know she wanted the best for her kids, but often a good outcome was in
reach and she could not see it.She was
often more of a hindrance than a help.And by the time I was in my teens I could only think of getting out of
that house.

It was a rocky trail for me too.I dropped out of college, worked different
jobs, mostly in construction, and survived on the streets for a few years.I finally returned to college and got a
degree in chemistry, then a salaried position.I was the first in my family to get a college degree.

Mom passed away in 1977.Life was not easy for her.I sometimes
think if her situation had been different, then she could have lived to her
potential.I know she deserved
better.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Production
is picking up and there’s some variety now.I got kohlrabi 9 oz (1 bulb), pak choi 9 oz (1 head), lettuce 19 oz,
radish 7 oz, spinach 3 oz.The small
head of spinach is the first of the spring planted spinach, a little small but
I wanted a spinach omelette for breakfast.For the year 18.9 pounds – 7.6 pounds of that is parsnip from last year.I pulled the purple pak choi this morning
since it’s growth appears to have stopped in the recent warm weather.Compared to 2011 the beds have produced more
lettuce and less spinach.

The beds are mostly planted up now.Due to the warm spring most of the plantings
were moved up about two weeks on average.The tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant were set in a week ago.A few stragglers haven’t gone in yet – two okra
plants, a Diva cucumber plant, and the last set of brassicas that aren’t quite
ready for the great outdoors just yet.The first patch of Provider green beans was planted about a week ago.Provider is supposed to be a little more cold
tolerant than most green bean varieties, so it was the first bean planted.

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About this Blog

I moved to this place in SW Indiana in 2008. The property is six acres of woods, pasture, yard and pond. Usable garden space with full sun is limited by surrounding trees to 250 square feet of raised beds, more the size of an urban garden. I use intensive techniques: rotation of plant families, nutrient cycling, cages and trellises, row cover and cold frames to get the most out of the space.

About Me

A native Hoosier, I worked in the construction trades and later in life got a chemistry degree and worked in a research lab until retirement. I raise vegetables because they taste better and it saves money. What other hobby pays for itself? I'm a cheapskate - I won't buy new seeds until the old ones aren't any good. I'm also a bit of a lazy gardener - if I can buy the seedlings I want then why start the seeds, or if I can engineer a way to make it less work I'll do so. I also drink too much beer. But I never (well almost never) work in the garden and drink beer.